Trial ordered for two suspects in Wildomar slaying

A detective testified Friday that the three people accused in the slaying of a man in Wildomar gave conflicting accounts of who did what during the Sept. 18 incident.

"Just about every person we talked to in this case changed their statement more than once," sheriff's Investigator James Peters said during the preliminary hearing for two of the suspects.

There were common threads emerging from the interviews, however -- a man was beaten to death, the fatal blows came from a baseball bat, all three suspects had something to do with it and they had a motive.

Such details, Judge Mark Mandio decided at Southwest Justice Center in French Valley, were enough to order Anthony Albert Garcia, 33, and Summer Sharmaine Stephens, 38, to stand trial on charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit a crime. They could face sentences of life in prison without parole if convicted as charged.

The same accusations have been levied against the third suspect, a teenage boy who is being tried separately in juvenile court. The names of minors accused of crimes are typically kept confidential by legal authorities.

In making his ruling, Mandio rejected the request of Stephens' defense attorney, Sara Jewett, to drop the charges against her client. Jewett said Stephens did not start the fight that led to the death, did not participate in it, tried to stop it and called 911 to bring emergency personnel to the scene.

The judge, himself, had wondered why she would have called 911 and told the dispatcher there had been an assault if she had participated in someone's murder.

Prosecutor Jess Walsh said she might have had numerous motives, but the most obvious one was that Garcia was bleeding from a sizable gash to the back of his head.

After hearing Jewett's argument, Mandio noted that each of the defendants' narratives, as related by Peters, appeared designed to point more guilt toward the others and less toward themselves. One of those included the 13-year-old boy who had told Peters he heard Stephens and Garcia planning the assault.

After the 911 call, emergency personnel responded to the scene and found Garcia and Stephens standing near the house on Mariposa Road. They discovered the body of Steven Lawrence Markley, 42, whom authorities believed to be a transient, inside the house. Peters described it as being full of trash, debris and discarded empty bottles, mostly 40-ounce Cobra malt-liquor containers, with walls covered by graffiti, and no electricity.

Peters said officers took Stephens to the Lake Elsinore Sheriff's Station, where he later interviewed her. Garcia was taken to Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar for treatment.

According to Peters, Stephens initially said she and Garcia had been out and returned to find Markley knocked out, prompting her to try giving him cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Later, Peters said, Stephens admitted a fight had occurred and she saw Markley strike Garcia on the head with something resembling a hatchet. She brought up the name of a boy in the neighborhood who frequented the house. He was the young brother of a man with whom she was acquainted. The man and another friend of hers pleaded guilty in late August to assaulting Markley.

"They knew Mr. Markley had spoken to police and they had labeled him a snitch," Peters said.

When he talked to Garcia in the hospital, Peters said, the man contended he got into a fight with Markley because Markley had been disrespectful to Stephens, but he couldn't remember much after being hit in the head.

The juvenile told Peters he went to the house regularly to hang out because it was fun and the adults would give him alcohol and cigarettes. On the day of the incident, he said he had left when he saw Markley and Garcia fighting. Peters said he then told the boy that Markley had died.

"He put his hands to his head and said, 'I didn't mean to kill him,'" Peters said.

According to the boy, it was Stephens who pulled him aside, told him they were going to beat up Markley, and that if he didn't help, they would go after him.

When he went back in the room, the boy said, Garcia was using a bat to attack Markley and then handed it to him, and the boy used it to strike the man. The teenager told the detective he had seen Garcia with Markley's wallet and watched him take a bottle of vodka from a pocket of the deceased man.

In a subsequent interview with Garcia, the defendant said it was the boy who instigated the attack when he started making comments that "Mr. Markley had snitched and was the reason his brother was going to jail."

Peters said a baseball bat was found outside near the scene with what appeared to be bloodstains on it, and a photograph of it was admitted as evidence along with other photos from the scene.

A court date was set for early April to begin preparations for the trial.